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Volume 20

Nomad - Fall 2018

Verse

Written by
Nabina Das

Nabina Das is a 2017 Sahapedia-UNESCO fellow, a 2012 Charles Wallace creative writing alumna (Stirling University), and a 2016 Commonwealth Writers Organisation feature correspondent. Born and brought up in Guwahati, Assam, Nabina's poetry collections are Sanskarnama (2017), Into the Migrant City (2013), and Blue Vessel (2012). Her first novel is Footprints in the Bajra (2010) , and her short fiction volume is titled The House of Twining Roses (2014). A 2012 Sangam House, a 2011 NYS Summer Writers Institute, and a 2007 Wesleyan Writers Conference alumna, Nabina writes and translates occasionally in English, Assamese and Bengali while her poetry has been translated into the Croatian, French, Bengali, Malayalam, and Urdu. A guest faculty at University of Hyderabad for Creative Writing, Nabina has worked in journalism and media for about 10 years, and is the co-editor of 40 under 40, an anthology of post-globalisation poetry (2016).

Edible Geography of the Lover

One day wemake loveletters out of mapsour bodies given to pleasant folliesIf you’ve been traveling longyou’d stop first at the isthmus of those armsrest your hand there to sense any seismic starthearts roasting — your spice, my flamesThe birth mark by the temple, a place to start the firefingers measuring the grains in your cheek beardyour lips become tea tastersyou separate the pale from the strongWhat of hair, fingertips, the small of the back exposed?you eat cities, eat little townships, sometimes rawadd your breath to the weather every now and thenlet the rivulets flowsave the smoothness of the forearm to be servedwith the rest of the feast that waitsfrom seen fault-lines to unknown crevices — tangerine, paddy blooming like flowers, grapes oozing warmthA snack of the earlobes, and then downthe salty shoulder’s canyonby the time you arrived at the hollow of the neckyou tell him you can taste chocolatelots and lots of itdeep and darkdown the chest and while you partthe fine hair around the areolayou mouth the darker portionsand realize stunned — no other black magic could do it for you!Continue the trip and seethe great valley rise and fall at your hungeryour saliva gathered at the pool of the navelthe trench that dips around the soothing coola little honey, a little tartthirst, so much thirstand you drink on like the only person ever lost in a desert!Along the slight rise of the peninsular hunchesyou slip down, a clumsy traveler!your cartography didn’t tellabout this surprise whensuddenly, still thirsting and parchedyou find the fountain of lifeswimming with fish — no more words then!Smooth ranges flank the magic nookand you know how you also want breadkneaded well with your own handsforests with muskmountain passes with saffron flowersand rocks melting at a lickand tongue-tasted camphor — edible geography of the loveronce you reached the hinterlandyou only want to move up againagain eat the landscape you just chartedremain a traveler of taste for all lifeand you, lover woman — you want more maps as food.